Search This Blog

WE, THE PEOPLE...

...OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC and to secure to all its citizens: JUSTICE, social, economic and political; LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship; EQUALITY of status and of opportunity; and to promote among them all FRATERNITY assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the Nation; IN OUR CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY this twenty-sixth day of November, 1949, do HEREBY ADOPT, ENACT AND GIVE TO OURSELVES THIS CONSTITUTION.

Sixty years later, these words still provide a worthy framework for the idea of India. Along with Dr B R Ambedkar, one of the prime architects of the constitution was Dr Alladi Krishnaswamy. (The constitution can be downloaded from the NIC site, by the way.)

The Alladi Memorial Trust was founded in 1983 by a scion of the family, Alladi Kuppuswami. This commemorates the birth centenary of Dr Alladi Krishnaswamy and has, among its objectives, the aim of "holding lectures and seminars on issues relating to the Indian Constitution, which are intended to apprise the general public of the various debates concerning constitutional law."

Tulika's new publication of the Alladi Memorial Lectures brings together fourteen lectures delivered over the years for the Alladi Memorial Trust and the Umamaheswaram Memorial lectures – and some seminar papers.

The topics covered by these essays are very relevant in today’s context. They include basic features of, and the use and abuse of the Constitution; the judicial process; uniform civil code; right to conversion; secularism and minority rights; formation of the Hindu religious consciousness; failure of laws to contain communalism; need for jurisprudence of women’s rights; intellectual property rights; and parliamentary democracy."

Comments

Popular Posts

How have the archetypes for femininities and masculinities been reshaped in Indian political history and in the present? How have the practises and subjectivities of none-lite individuals and communities contributed to the production of alternative self representation? What does a focus on the linkages between materialities and ideologies reveal in such an inquiry?

Unsettling the Archetypes addresses these questions from the standpoint of longstanding issues within Indian society, history and culture. An expression of multiple temporalities and diverse regional contexts, these issues range from the nationalist movement for independence to the career of the Women’s Bill in Parliament; violence in Hindu-Muslim relations; meanings surrounding the body; the life of history textbooks; and forms of activism among Dalit communities.
Rather tha…

Growing up in the dusty and dacoit-infested by-lanes of Saifai in Etawah district, four-year-old Tipu knew he had to change his name in order to join school. He took charge and named himself Akhilesh. At home he had one of India’s most controversial politicians, Mulayam Singh Yadav for a father whose obsession with politics left him little time either for his ailing wife, Malti Devi or his son.

Akhilesh Yadav tried to keep the connection to the senior Yadav a secret in military school, and later in college in Mysore, while his father negotiated his way through the badlands of Uttar Pradesh and ended up wresting control thrice as chief minister.

Written by veteran journalist and Resident Editor of the Hindustan Times (Lucknow) Sunita Aron, Akhilesh Yadav: Winds Of Change is a detailed and lively chronicle of Uttar Pradesh’s political history where the lust for power orchestrated every politician— Indira Gandhi, V P Singh, Ma…

A new title published by Oxford University Press (India). Regimes of Narcissism, Regimes of Despair by Ashis Nandy.

A polymath of our time, Ashis Nandy's writings and arguments have enriched our thinking for over four decades. Unafraid to walk a difficult terrain, he is one of the most radical public intellectuals of our time.

In this book Nandy talks about a new India, where the fate of the country is largely decided by its political culture that has become the domain of two predominant psychological states: narcissism and despair. Looking at the nationalism of Gandhi and Tagore, Savarkar, and Madanlal Pahwa, and cultural psychology, terror and counter-terror, humiliation and human degradation, happiness, and modernity and the sense of loss, the essays open up the future for the next generation of intellectuals and political activists in India and in other societies.
In Hardcover, Rs. 595, 208 Pages, Dimensions: 8.5 in x 5.5 in, ISBN: 9780198089650